QUEBEC — In the years leading to his attack on the Quebec City mosque, Alexandre Bissonnette was on what a psychiatrist described as a “quest for power.”

After a life spent being bullied and rejected, he felt increasingly anxious and depressed. He was seeking a target to take his anger out on.

He identified with mass murderers and grew obsessed with their crimes. He had been since he was a teenager, when he first became suicidal and contemplated killing his classmates or burning his school down.

More recently, his fascination turned to firearms. He lied about his mental health history to obtain a permit to purchase them. Guns gave him a sense of power, he told a psychiatrist, and he soon grew convinced that killing himself was no longer enough — he needed “the glory” that came with killing others first.

On Jan. 29, 2017, he walked into the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec, and in a calm and calculated manner, opened fire as men and children panicked around him.

But can Bissonnette, now 28, eventually be rehabilitated? At his sentencing hearing Tuesday, three mental health experts called by his defence team said they believe he could be.

Bissonnette has pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted murder for his attack on the mosque. He faces a life sentence with his parole eligibility to be set anywhere between 25 and 150 years.

“It’s very difficult to know what he will be like in 25 years,” said Marie-Frédérique Allard, a psychiatrist who produced a 44-page report on Bissonnette after conducting interviews with him and his parents. “I think he’s able to change, but it will depend on several factors.”

Allard was first mandated by the defence to determine whether Bissonnette was criminally responsible for his actions.

Before pleading guilty, it was heard in court Tuesday, Bissonnette had contemplated arguing he was not criminally responsible for the crime. He later admitted to lying about hearing voices and hallucinating to help his cause.

After experts debunked his facade, he told them he made it up to try to give his family a way of understanding what he had done and save himself from their judgment. Allard said she knew Bissonnette was criminally responsible since their very first meeting.

Psychiatrist Sylvain Faucher, asked to evaluate Bissonnette in September and December 2017 for the same reasons, determined Bissonnette knew what he was doing at the time of the killings and was capable of telling right from wrong.

He was called to testify Tuesday about Bissonnette’s level of dangerousness and the reasons why he believes he was driven to kill.

“Evaluating the dangerousness of someone is very difficult and is done without any certainties,” Faucher warned Justice François Huot. “There is no such thing as zero risks.”

Asked to determine why Bissonnette committed the crime, Faucher said he was on a quest for power and “wanted to counter a feeling of weakness, of inadequacy.”

He was desperate to overcome his sense of failure and to compensate for his lack of identity, Faucher wrote in a report prepared for the hearing.

“He could not define who he is,” he wrote, “what he should be or what he should do.”

But above all else, Faucher concluded, the killings were “to express all the resentment he’s accumulated from the acts of ostracization and intimidation he’s endured since the end of his primary education.”

Asked why he feels Bissonnette chose to attack a mosque, Faucher said his quest was fuelled by different sources.

“Be it the ideas of the current U.S. president on immigration, or the positions of the right and extreme, right-wing media,” he wrote, noting, however, that Bissonnette wasn’t actively involved in any xenophobic movements.

Bissonnette was simply looking for a target, Faucher said, and chose Muslims because of the times we live in.

In his own twisted logic, Lamontagne said, Bissonnette believed killing Muslims was “more acceptable” since he thought there would surely be at least one terrorist inside the mosque.

In a 40-page report, Lamontagne reasoned that, considering the lengthy sentences at play, and given the right circumstances, it “wouldn’t be unrealistic” to believe Bissonnette could be rehabilitated one day.

On Tuesday, Crown prosecutor Thomas Jacques questioned Lamontagne on some of the troubling personality traits the court has heard about the convicted killer.

Jacques mentioned how different experts have described Bissonnette as having a rigid way of seeing things, an inability to let go of his thoughts and a hard time changing his mind.

He then quoted from a neuropsychological report, completed in July 2017, that described Bissonnette as immature, impulsive and narcissistic, with a poor capacity for empathy and a tendency to manipulate.

Jacques asked Lamontagne if he agreed with those findings.

“In large part, yes,” Lamontagne answered. “Sometimes he expresses remorse, other times his anger takes over.”

Jacques wondered whether Bissonnette can really be expected to rehabilitate in prison, a place where he’s already reported feeling harassed again by other detainees and staff.

Wouldn’t continuous bullying only worsen his state of mind and make rehabilitation more difficult, Jacques asked. And why should anyone believe Bissonnette will now be open to help after years of suppressing his anger and dark intentions?

“It will clearly take an effort on his behalf,” Lamontagne said. “If he stays the way he is today, in 25 years his request (for parole) will be denied. That I’m sure of.”

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